


Mikhailo Milkovich Had To Die

by LilWitchMama1417



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 15:17:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11923638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilWitchMama1417/pseuds/LilWitchMama1417
Summary: The Gallaghers are told that Mickey was found dead.  Man are they in for a big surprise!





	Mikhailo Milkovich Had To Die

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fix and I really hope I did okay. It is unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

Ian was walking home after an incredibly stressful shift that included necessary overtime. Several of his fellow EMTs were out sick with the flu and they were getting back-to-back calls ‘round the clock. The situations were all over the place, and each one was worse than the last.  
A sixteen year old pregnant girl went into labor in a motel room she had been living in when her parents kicked her out, and the manager had called for an ambulance after finding the girl passed out in her bathroom. Just down the road from Fairytail, a kid (not much younger than Ian) had been beaten pretty badly and left in an alley until someone found him and placed a call. The situations just kept getting more depressing and gruesome as the day wore on, and Ian just wanted to take a shower and sleep in his own bed for a few years.  
After things ended with Trevor, Ian threw himself into his work and family. He didn’t go out or drink much. He refused to sleep with anyone or even go on dates. His meds were stable and he was trying to be there for his family now in a way he wasn’t able to for so long. He even helped with Yevgeny as often as he could, giving him a sense of being close to Mickey in a way. It didn’t help with missing him, but it made him feel like he was doing something for Mickey, and it didn’t hurt that he loved Yev like he was his own son.  
Walking into the living room to find his whole family, including Kev, Vee and the twins, Svetlana and Yevgeny, is not what he was expecting- or prepared for- right after his shift. But, looking around at all of their face and seeing everything from tears to sobs to quiet sadness, he knew he needed to be present.  
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking to Fiona for answers. Moving towards him to wrap him in a hug, she pulled away with a sympathetic look in her eyes.  
“Svetlana got a call today; it was an agent at the FBI... “ she paused, trying to decide on the best way to deliver whatever news she had. “Ian, they found Mickey.”  
He gave her a confused look. “That’s not possible. I watched him cross the border; he wouldn’t have come back with him being wanted. If they have him then-then that means he’s back in prison, and-”  
“Ian,” Lip said, interrupting his brother’s ranting, “Mickey’s not in prison. They found a body just on this side of the border. It was identified a few days ago as Mickey.”  
When it still didn’t seem to register to Ian what, exactly, they were telling him, Fiona sat him down in the nearest seat and said, bluntly, “Mickey’s dead, Ian.”  
Everyone was silent, eerily silent; some were holding their breaths, just waiting for the explosion that they were sure was coming at any second. But Ian only sat staring blankly, looking from face to face, seeing the hurt they were all feeling. No one knew how to take Ian’s reaction, or lack thereof. None of them could really judge how to handle the situation until he said or did something that required responding to.  
So they sat and they waited. For over an hour, they waited for some sign of life to come from their friend and brother. Eventually, Debbie, Svet, and Vee took all the youngest ones over to the Balls’ house to sleep. Kev stayed in case they needed help with Ian. Apparently, that’s how long it took for it to sink in to him what had been said, because it wasn’t much longer before he started to speak.  
“No,” was all he said, garnering the attention of everyone in the room.  
“Ian?” Fiona said quietly, reaching out to touch his shoulder. He shrugged her off and pushed away from his seat. He started pacing, letting the emotions flow forth.  
The dam burst.  
“No, no, no, nonononono!” Ian was pulling at his hair, repeating that one word over and over again.  
He felt like he was trapped in his skin; like he was inhaling poisoned air and couldn’t breathe properly anymore. The ability to function past that one word, those two letters and one syllable- everything had fled him aside from “No”. He wasn’t even feeling the pain, no, but a blunted reaction to the emotional agony that had paralyzed him for over an hour and a half. The calm of the shock had worn off, and now his body was reacting to the trauma.  
He was clawing at his skin, trying to break free of the pain, and when Lip approached to calm him down Ian struck out without thinking. He threw punches left and right, simply trying to escape the reality of what they were telling him. He couldn’t feel it when Lip hit him back- trying to snap Ian out of it- to when his fist broke his brother’s nose. No. What he felt were memories.  
When he swung at Lip, he saw himself throat punching Mickey. When Lip’s fist connected with Ian’s jaw, he saw Mickey standing over him outside their abandoned building. When he and Lip got their arms locked around each other and were each tossing the other around, Ian remembered that day he had tried to rob Mickey with a tire iron.  
His heart wasn’t just breaking or shattering. It was being torn from his chest by an invisible hand that dug its claws in and twisted, just to draw it out and make it hurt worse.  
And once his heart had been ripped out- once nothing was left but a gaping, bloody, empty hole- and everyone had backed away from his blind rampage, did he double over and let loose a sound that none of them had ever heard before. It was born in the pit of his stomach and climbed its way up and out of his throat. The sound of a wounded, dying animal. The howl of a mourning wolf. The guttural roar of ultimate pain. The sound of having a part of yourself that you cannot live without being ripped away. As the scream died away into wretched sobs, he sank to the floor and cried himself hoarse.  
Fiona, Lip, Carl, and Kev all watched as their brother fell apart right before their eyes. None of them could understand how he was feeling; none of them had ever loved and lost the way Ian had. There was nothing they could say or do to come close even to comforting him.  
The men in the room were frozen on the spot, looking to each other for some sign of what to do, and were all drawing up blank. And Fiona… Fiona had her hands over her mouth to muffle the sounds accompanying the tears pouring down her face, because she didn’t cry for just Mickey. No, she cried because she was watching her baby brother die right before her eyes; because Mickey fucking Milkovich- no matter how much he loved him- was taking Ian to the grave right along with him.  
With the exception of Ian, they all turned when they heard the front door open and in came a scared- scared? no scared didn’t cover it- terrified Mandy Milkovich looking wildly between all of them. Everyone could see her break when she saw Ian.  
“Nooooo,” she said (there was that word, again), making her way over to wrap her skinny arms around the red-head’s crumpled form.  
Ian and Mandy sat like that for a long time. Long after people had come and gone, they sat together in their grief until Lip convinced Mandy to help him get Ian into bed for the night.  
Unfortunately, once they got him there, Ian refused to get out of bed for two weeks. He still took his meds and ate and went to the bathroom, but went straight back to bed afterwards. Fiona called in to explain things to Rita; she was understanding, and let them know that Ian’s job was waiting for him once he got back on his feet.  
In the time that he was in bed, Mandy had made the decision that having the body cremated was for the best; none of them could afford a funeral, after all. So there was no service, no memorial, nothing to mark the celebration of a life or the mourning of a loved one. Nothing but the delivery of a jar of ashes that no one could bear to look at.  
Everyone carried on with their lives. They went to work, they moved on. Lip and Mandy even got back together, or their equivalent. The world continued on while Ian was stuck. He couldn’t move forward, and he didn’t understand how anyone else could, either; not when something- someone- so wonderful and important and beautiful had been removed from the world. Hell, Mickey had been Ian’s whole world. How the fuck was he supposed to move on from that?  
One day, a month or so after they got the news, Ian and Mandy were the only ones home. She was asleep in Lip’s bed as Ian walked to the bathroom for his first shower in a long time.  
Standing under the hot spray, he decided right then and there that he was going to do what he had been thinking about since he realized that Mickey was really gone. He was going to join him; no matter what lay beyond death, if Mickey was going to be there then so was he.  
So, after getting out of the shower and getting dressed, Ian made his way down the stairs to the living room. He had planned to walk straight through to the kitchen, grab a knife, and slit his wrists in the bathtub. He stopped, however, when he heard someone knocking on the front door incessantly. It took all of his willpower to go to the door, but he didn’t want them to wake Mandy so that she could either delay the inevitable or stop him entirely. Better to see what they want and send them on their way himself.  
Dragging his feet behind him, he mentally prepared himself to actually speak to someone for the first time in a month. Turning the handle he pulled the door open to greet the person on the other side.  
“Can I help you?” Ian said blankly.  
He was really short for a dude, and had a blond mohawk; those were the first things Ian noticed about him. After that he noted the opaque aviator sunglasses that were hiding his eyes and most of a rather pale face. He was wearing black biker boots, black, fitted skinny jeans, a leather jacket and a dark grey scarf. All in all, he was pretty fucking hot, and was weirdly familiar. Ian just didn’t know how familiar until the guy lowered his head to remove his shades.  
Keeping his eyes downcast he said, “C’mon, Gallagher, don’t ya recognize me?” Then he lifted his eyes up to look at Ian, and those glorious baby blues were unmistakable, no matter what.  
Ian’s breathing became labored, and, though he could see the guy’s lips moving, all he could hear was a heartbeat that he thought no longer existed. Before he could calm himself down, he blacked out with only one thought in his head:  
Mickey’s alive? 

When Ian came to, several hours had passed. He got up and made his way downstairs, immediately noticing that all the Gallagher’s, Ball’s, and Milkovich’s were now present in the living room, but he had eyes for only one person. The blond man standing on the far side of the room with Yev held tight to his chest.  
Mickey fuckin’ Milkovich.  
Slowly, cautiously, Ian made his way over to him. He was desperate to reach out and touch the man, just to make sure he was real, but he was too scared to do it. So, he settled for asking a stupidly cliche question.  
“Is it really you?” It came out sounding much more gravelly than intended, his voice rough from disuse.  
“What kind of stupid ass question is that?” he asked in a Mickey-typical way before sobering his tone and expression. “Yeah, it’s really me.”  
Ian nodded, thinking for a moment. “Alright, then tell me something only you and I would know.”  
Mickey’s now-blond eyebrows shot up towards his hairline in disbelief. “Are you fuckin’ serious right now?” the only response he got was a serious nod. Huffing, Mickey thought about the question before smirking and simply saying, “I still have the rosary for giants.”  
Those few words lit up something in Ian’s dead, green eyes; they brought him back to life in one instant, but something- doubt, or the fear of hope?- prevented him from moving any closer to Mickey. Seeing this, Mickey handed Yev over to the closest person to him who wasn’t already holding a child, and stepped up to Ian, who had his eyes set on the floor.  
He brought his hand up near Ian’s face, just barely letting the tips of his fingers brush over the freckled cheek, causing Ian to take in a sharp breath. When he didn’t pull away, Mickey settled his hand with his thumb resting in front of Ian’s ear and his fingers wrapped behind the base of his skull and the nape of his neck.  
Leaning into the touch, Ian allowed his eyes to open and meet that special shade of blue he had been missing for so long. There was such a look of heartbreaking sincerity and concern on Mickey’s face that Ian couldn’t help but tear up, though he tried to hold the tears back.  
“Hey, I’m here now” Mickey said, oh so quietly, pulling the love of his life into a hug. “I’m here, and I’m never leaving you ever again.”  
“You promise?” Ian pleaded into Mickey’s shoulder.  
“I swear it.” And with that, Ian’s resolve not to cry finally broke. He let the tears run free and stain the shirt beneath his face, and wrapped his arms tightly around that muscular waist he loved so much. They stood just like that for what felt like hours, but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.  
Then, of course, Lip Gallagher had to ruin it.  
“So, not to interrupt or anything, but how did you manage to convince the government that you’re dead?” Lip asked in his typical condescending fashion.  
“Well,” Mickey said as he and Ian sat down (practically on top of each other) and got comfortable, “I started planning for all of this not too long after I got into Mexico. I figured that I could find the most influential crime boss around, get to working for him and maybe get some help in the process. So, as soon as I got settled safely away from the border, I found this guy who worked for a family drug ring. I ended up saving his life, and he introduced me to some of the higher-ups. They assigned me to security details and sent me along for any meetings that needed a, uh, firmer touch. I made friends with the tops boss’ son’s and their dad ended up likin’ me; so he asked if there was anything he could help me with. I, obviously, jumped at the chance to get home and the bossman thought I had been a loyal worker and agreed to help me out.”  
A few minutes of letting that sink in led Fiona to ask, “But how did the body get identified as you?”  
“There was this guy who’d messed with the boss’ niece or something, and he just so happened to be my height. They had me bring him in, give him tats just like mine, since prisons keep tabs on everyone’s tattoos these days. They offed him, pulled his teeth and did away with any fingerprints, then dropped him just this side of the border to make it look like he was trying to sneak back in. By the time the feds found him he was rotted beyond recognition. My boss set me up with a whole new identity, helped me change a few things about my looks, and got me back into the US. Now, here I am; a new man,” he finished explaining in a chipper voice. For a while, everyone just sat there absorbing the new information, when Yev crawled over and started making grab-hands at Mickey and Ian. Mickey reached out to lift the boy into his arms, and that was when Kev noticed and said:  
“Dude! You got your old tats covered!”  
Everyone returned their attention to Mickey and focused on his previously threatening hands, which were now covered by something completely new. Ian took Mick’s right hand in his left and ran his fingertips over the four different roses that adorned his knuckles.  
“Yeah, man, I didn’t wanna risk someone spotting my old ones and turning me in, so I got ‘em covered with somethin’ thats symbolic or some shit.” Mickey was obviously trying to play tough, but they could all tell that he meant what he said.  
“So what do they symbolize?” Debbie asked.  
Mickey’s face turned red as he tried, and failed to deflect her question. Finally giving in to the explanation with a sigh, he said, “Each one represents someone important to me. Ian, Yev, Mandy, Liam, Debbie, Franny, Carl, and Fiona.” His face turned an even darker shade at this new admission.  
"Why'd you dye your hair so light, man?" Carl wondered.  
"Uh, this, um, is actually my real hair color," Mickey muttered with his eyes cast down.  
"WHAT?!" All the adults in the room exclaimed simultaneously. But no one was more shocked than Ian.  
"Why did you never tell me that you dyed your hair?"  
"Cuz it's embarrassing, man. I didn't wanna make people think I was a pussy, and I know you. You would've asked me to let it grow out, and I'd've agreed because it's you," he paused, sobering up once again. "But I didn't have much of a choice this time. On all of my documents I'm listed with black hair, so this seemed like a pretty good cover."  
"So what's your new name?" Ian asked.  
Mickey looked down at their joined hands and muttered under his breath so no one would hear him.  
"Mick," Ian implored, "what's your name?"  
Mickey looked up from beneath his lashes and said quietly, "James Andrew Michaels; so it would make sense for people to still call me Mick..." Ian sensed a 'but' at the end of his sentence.  
"But?"  
"But," Mickey said after a breath, "that's just the name on my new birth certificate and social. They, also, made me two I.D.s... and this," he reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper to hand to Ian.  
When he unfolded it, he was floored by what he saw. He met Mickey's eyes with his; questions in both of their depths.  
"Really?" Ian murmured.  
"Really," Mickey reached back into his pocket and opened his hand to reveal two matching silver bands resting in his palm. He looked up to Ian, chewing on his lip with nervousness.  
Ian started nodding frantically, saying, "Yes. Hell yes!" And with that he dropped the sheet of paper he was holding and pulled Mickey to him. Their lips met in an intense, slow, passionate kiss that made everyone in the room uncomfortable.  
Fiona picked up the sheet of paper off the floor and smiled at what it revealed.  
A marriage certificate that listed Mickey's new name as James Andrew (Michaels) Gallagher.  
Looking back to her brother and his fiance, she couldn't help but agree with Mickey. For everyone to be happy, Mikhailo Milkovich really did have to die.


End file.
